Trace, The Action Sports Tracker, founded by
a father son duo and recently added industry veteran Brad Blankinship to its
executive team and aims to crush it with the Trace device.

Based
in Huntington Beach, CA, Anatole Lokshin (father), formerly of Magellan
Navigation and David Lokshin (son) bring their combined professional experience
in GPS/Sensor Algorithms and Mathematics, passion for action sports and data into
this new “thing” that changes the participant experience in action sports. Naturally,
we jumped at the opportunity to pick their brains.

David Lokshin

Can you make it really simple for us to
understand what this thing does and why people will like it?

DL: Trace is the Action Sports Tracker. Trace helps you improve your
performance and you never have to edit another video. We do this by tracking
and storing your every session and allowing you to compare your performance
over time and against others.

We also auto edit your video. Just sync your GoPro to the app, and
then we’ll edit out the highlights (just your waves or runs), color correct the
clips so that the colors pop, and overlay your stats on the footage. Again, all
this happens automatically. It’s like magic.

Who initially saw the need for Trace, you or
your Dad? Why did you decide to partner up to create Trace?

DL: Neither
of us, actually. Anatole’s idea was that sensors would soon be everywhere, and
we played around with a lot of ideas at first. The one that took off was a
portal for skiers and snowboarders that showed them their speed, vertical, and
other stats. It just kept growing, and we kept putting more time and energy
into it. That initial platform grew into Trace Snow and Trace Surf.

Anatole
came up with video auto editing. He was working on the jump algorithm and
watching hours of footage from athletes doing jumps. The jumps last for a few
seconds, but he was scanning through hours of video. Why can’t I just scan
right to the jump? So we built that functionality, showed it to some of our
more avid users, and they were blown away.

How is your previous career in trading
foreign exchange options helping you now?

DL: Trading
is a really high stress job. It’s a lame answer, but the most useful skill I
learned was to remain unemotional and hyper-rational during high stress
situations.

Anatole Lokshin

How long has the technology been available to
do what you’re doing with Trace?

AL: To
create a successful consumer product, the right technology must be available
for the right price. Trace requires the right combination of multiple
technologies–embedded inertial sensors, GPS, phone app, algorithms and data
processing, and a powerful backend. While all these technologies were available
for some time, only in the last 2 – 3 years have they become widely available
and affordable.

How do you make Trace and the GoPro device
talk to each other?How does someone
realize the benefit of this?

AL: In
general terms, we synchronize the Trace and GoPro (or any other camera). While
it sounds simple, there are a lot of important details because we need to
annotate very fast motion such as jumps and tricks, so synchronization must be
at a sub-second level. We’ve successfully patented this technology.

Have you ever had so much fun with your work
as you are now?

AL: We are
changing how Action Sports are participated in and enjoyed; this is really
exciting. I had a similar experience before when I started to working for
Magellan – we created consumer GPS, which completely changed how people live
their lives. This was very exciting time too.

What can you tell us about the possibilities
you see for future product developments?Do you have any ideas kicking around that are “out there”?

The
Action Sport monitoring is only in its infancy, so there are a lot of ideas,
much more than we can implement with our small team. The trend is clear that
sensors and cameras will be everywhere. This will generate an enormous amount
of video and data, but it needs to be processed and catalogued. What we are
working on is to take this large amount of data and merge, sort, annotate, tag,
and present only the important highlights. This all must be done instantly and
automatically in the background, transparent to end-users. Surf and snow are
just the first sports that we are covering. Ultimately we want Trace to be
available to all action sports.

Brad Blankinship

This product is different from past companies
and products you were involved with.What is most exciting to you about this?

BB: When I
first met David and he showed me the Trace footage with the data overlay I
thought this is going everything…Think
of contest judging and how subjective it is for example.The most exciting part for me is being a part
of something that can help the progression of action sports.

What is most exciting to you about having the
opportunity to serve as the Chief Operating Officer?

BB: I enjoy
the excitement and energy that comes with working with innovative companies in
their infancy.My initial focus has been
sales and marketing, but we are all very involved in every aspect of the
business.

What are your goals
over the next 12-24 months?

BB: Our
goal is to become the platform that processes all sensor data for sports.That is pretty ambitious and that will take
some time.We also want people to think
about video as a tool that they use all the time, not something that they bring
out on special occasions and it takes forever to edit.

Currently
Trace has a partnership with Channel Island Surfboards where the company tests
surfboard attributes and provides Channel Island with exclusive data analysis.
Trace has some exciting things coming up that you aren’t going to
want to miss! Check them out at www.traceup.com
to stay in the loop!